The Thirteenth Skull

He shrugged.

“So you’re saying OIPEP had nothing to do with this?” I asked.

“I am here on the direction of Director Smith, who said you wanted to speak to us.”

“And you, OIPEP’s SPA, head honcho in the black ops department, just happened to be in town on the same day an assassin shows up to kill me.”

“Call it serendipity.”

“If you kill me, you’ll never get your hands on it.”

“I have no intention of killing you, Alfred. You are far too valuable to us alive. Perhaps as a gesture of goodwill, the Company could bring its resources to bear in finding those responsible for this most heinous and wicked attack.”

“That would be really sweet of you guys. What about me?”

“You?”

“Extracting me. Isn’t that what you call it? Extract me from this interface. Make these charges go away.”

“That would prove a bit more complicated, I’m afraid.”

“But you could.”

He smiled, this time blessing me with an eyeful of his gorgeous orthodontics.

“And what in exchange for the benefits of such an extraction?” He was talking about the Seal. I said, “It was never about killing me, was it?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Mr. Delivery Dude. He wasn’t supposed to kill me. The whole thing was a setup, to put me in a bind so I’d have to make a deal.”

“Killing you seems more expeditious.”

“But for all you knew I hid the Seal and told nobody where I hid it. If you killed me, you might never get it back. So you had to keep me alive but stick me in a trap only you could get me out of.”

“You give me too much credit, Alfred. Even I would not anticipate your, shall we say, ruthless response to the attack this morning. Are you refusing to hand over the item?”

“If I hand it over now, there’s no reason for you to let me live.”

“As I’ve said, you’re far more useful to us alive than dead.”

“Why?”

He smiled. “The answer to that question, I would think, is obvious.”

13:12:41:36

Before he left, Nueve asked if there was anything else he could do. I told him yes, there was, and he promised he would arrange it.

Then he studied my face for a long time without saying anything, until finally he said, “Does it not work on yourself?”

“What?” I asked, but I knew what.

“The healing power of your blood—you cannot use it to repair your own wounds?”

I shook my head. “No. It doesn’t work on me.”

“A gift, then—not a treasure,” he whispered. “You carry a special burden, Alfred Kropp.”

He paused at the door. “Allow me a few moments to make the arrangements, yes?”

He pressed a small object into my hand. It looked like a ballpoint pen.

“What’s this?”

“Open it and see.”

I pulled off the cap, exposing a tiny hole at the top of the cylinder.

“Press the button on the side.”

I pressed and a hypodermic needle sprang from the hole.

“Only a single dose, but the poison metabolizes almost instantaneously, completely paralyzing the victim.”

The needle glittered wickedly in the fluorescent lights. “For how long?” I asked.

“Depends on the subject. Up to five minutes. Press the button again.”

I pressed, and the needle retracted.

“Why are you giving it to me?”

One of his eyebrows rose toward his dark, perfectly coiffed hair.

“You should refrain from asking questions to which you already know the answer, Alfred. It could create the impression that you are not as smart as you really are.”

He tapped lightly on the door with the head of his walking stick. “Until our next meeting, Alfred Kropp.”

“I’m really hoping there won’t be one.”

“The odds are against that.”

Bulldog-Face Man opened the door. Nueve stepped quickly into the hall and the door swung closed behind him.

I sat on the bed and waited. I got tired waiting there, so I went to the window. The window faced south, and there was Broadway, a dark ribbon between the yellow streetlights. I looked down six stories to the parking lot. A long drop, but I had recently dropped a lot longer. The window didn’t open, of course. I’d have to break the glass. And then the concrete below would break me. I guessed I could make a rope out of the bedsheets, but that would probably get me to only the fourth floor.

The door behind me opened and Bulldog-Face Man was standing there holding a bundle of clothes. He tossed them on the bed and stepped outside again without saying a word.

They were identical to his getup: white tube sox, white soft-soled shoes, white pants with a drawstring, a white short-sleeve shirt.

I dressed quickly and knocked softly on the door. He opened it, avoiding eye contact.

“Left down the hall, elevators on your right,” he murmured. “Unit 214. You got ten minutes.”

I started down the hall and he called softly, “Other left.”

So I turned back and hurried the opposite way. Behind some of the locked doors came sounds: moans, screeches, strange whoops; and behind other doors just silence. Maybe those rooms were empty, but I doubted it, and somehow the silence was more disturbing than the muffled screams.

I took the elevator to the second floor. The hallway here was a lot more crowded than my floor, which had all the ambience of a haunted house. Nurses and orderlies were everywhere, and doctors with stethoscopes around their necks and white lab coats billowing around them as they hurried to the next life-threatening emergency. Nobody paid any attention to me. In a hospital, just like anywhere else, I guess, you see what you expect to see. I was just another orderly hurrying along like all the other, real orderlies.

I stepped into Samuel’s room and eased the door shut behind me. There wasn’t much light and I stood with my back against the door for a few seconds, waiting for my eyes to adjust. I heard the hiss of an oxygen feed and the soft, steady beep-beep of a heart monitor. To my right was a row of cabinets. To the left were the bed and the screens showing Samuel’s heart rate, temperature, and blood pressure.

He looked very pale except for his eyelids, which were black as charcoal. If it weren’t for the squiggly lines on the monitor and the beeps, I might have thought I was too late.

“Samuel?” I whispered. “Samuel, it’s me, Alfred.”

He was muttering something under his breath, the word a barely audible hiss. I leaned closer and thought I heard him say “Sofia.” Sofia? Who was Sofia?